The Art of Destruction
by Evan Glaser
Summary: Ichigo muses about the Espada as individual representations of death. Grimmjow just wants him to shut the hell up. YAOI. Oneshot. Set a few years after the manga. Will most likely be rendered AU in the future. Please R&R.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or its characters.**

_Author's note: Been trying to write a Bleach fanfiction for a while, but my multi-chapter story idea keeps needing the manga to progress for a good while. I like the oneshot format, so decided to try that. Those of you up to date on the manga will recognize this inspiration for this piece._

_**The Art of Destruction**  
_

"You know, Soi Fong told me something once."

It took all of Grimmjow's energy to lift his head up. Even when he did, it was hard to see through the blood that was dripping into his eyes. He blinked it away the best he could so that he could actually see his opponent when he finally got his angry glare in order. That Kurosaki brat was just standing there all nonchalant like with his sword perched on his shoulder--his shoulder which was now white instead of black like it used to be. When had he gotten that captain's haori anyway?

"She told me that Barragan guy had said each Espada represented an aspect of death. "

What the hell was he yappin' about? Who gave a shit about anything that old fart Barragan had said? He would have shut the orange haired dumb-ass up with a well placed insult if it wasn't for the fact that he was having a hard time just breathing.

"After I heard that, I told the rest of the guys and we played a little game; we tried to match each aspect to each Espada, since she never said specifically which one was which. Well, actually, we all knew about Barragan being old age after their fight."

Now the brat was just strutting around casually like he was talking to a guy on the street--like there was no immediate threat to his life from an Espada class arrancar--like he, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, was not a threat to him at all. It pissed Grimmjow off; it pissed him off so much he couldn't stand it! Right now, though, there was nothing he could do about it.

"At first I thought you might be rage, but then I remembered Yammy. If any Espada had more anger than you it was definitely that guy. Ishida and Renji both plugged Szayel as madness, and Rukia said that Aaroniero was greed. I wasn't there for those so I gave them the benefit of the doubt."

Ichigo sat down Indian style right in front of him. Grimmjow was already on his knees from all his wounds, so now they were on the same level. Kurosaki had to come down to get to his level; the physical act perfectly complemented the metaphor and he hated it. This was not doing wonders for his already bruised ego.

"Byakuya didn't ever take the time out to talk to us about his battle, but Hanatarou said he thought that Zommari must have been intoxication. Stark told us himself that he was loneliness after everything was over. Ol' man Shunsui and Ukitake have been trying to rectify that ever since, and the fact that Linette usually tells them to come over while he's trying to take his naps just drives him crazy."

To add insult to injury, the orange haired dumb-ass was laughing about being all chummy with someone who used to be _his_ "comrade"--someone who was already more powerful than he was back when they were both Ichigo's enemies. Why did the damned brat have to torture him like this?

"Ulquiorra was definitely nihilism; there's no way you could've confused any of the rest of you with that one. Nel said that she represented sacrifice when she was an Espada, and it seems like Halibel was the same way when she got Nel's old position. She and Nel were the only two who really cared about their fraccion...well, who didn't mind showing it anyway. We all know how Stark feels about Linette, even if he won't admit it."

Why was he smiling like that--like this was such an easy thing for him to talk about? Ichigo was a fucking shinigami! He wasn't supposed to care about what hollows felt. That had always been the problem, though, hadn't it? He just couldn't stop himself from caring what his enemies felt; he was too much of a damned bleeding heart. Well, Grimmjow didn't have a fucking heart to bleed from. It didn't matter that he felt so angry that Ichigo hadn't mentioned his name among the Espada that cared for their fraccion. It didn't matter that this anger came even as Grimmjow's mind was screaming, "Of course I didn't care about my damn fraccion." It didn't matter that something deep down in him angrily disagreed with that sentiment or that it angrily disagreed with Ichigo's casual insinuation of that sentiment either. It didn't matter that things hadn't seemed quite right since the night they all died.

It offended Grimmjow that Ichigo was even making him think all of this--like there was a possibility that he, a hollow, an arrancar, and an Espada, could have any of these sympathetic emotions that humans and shinigami had--like any of the other Espada could have had them, too. Why did Ichigo have to make him feel like he was _feeling_--like he had emotion?

"Then it was just down to you and Nnoitra. At first, I thought despair and destruction seemed to be interchangeable between the two of you. You both enjoyed battle so much, each of you would fight until you died just to do it. Nel was the one who pointed out the difference behind Nnoitra's motivation and yours, though. She said Nnoitra would pick on the weak. I remember that now, when he attacked you after our last fight and you were almost dead."

Oh, shit, why did he have to bring that up? Why couldn't he just shut his mouth and finish this fight already?

"Besides the time you almost killed Rukia, I remember you always wanted to fight whoever was strongest. Nnoitra just wanted to fight anything that could move because he didn't see the point in anything else. He didn't even bother to kill you or Chad after you guys were completely incapacitated 'cause he wouldn't have cared to kill you if you weren't fighting him. That and the fact that it seemed like he was just waiting for someone more powerful than he was to kill him off in battle, well, that definitely made us realize that he was despair." Ichigo paused in deep thought.

Here it comes, Grimmjow thought. This would be the deep and poignant conclusion in which the brat would sum him up with that one last word he hadn't used yet. This was the culmination of all of Kurosaki Ichigo's unnecessary and stupid attempts to understand the teal haired Espada. This was gonna piss him off so bad that he might just up and die for the hell of it so he wouldn't have to listen anymore.

"That left us with you being destruction. It fits you like a glove, doesn't it? Anything that could be in your way you destroy. You even made Orihime heal me up after Ulquiorra destroyed me just so you could destroy me again. When you couldn't even do that, you kept egging me on to finish it because through me, you could destroy yourself."

"But you wouldn't fuckin' let me." Grimmjow had finally caught his breath enough to get a few words out. "You damned bitch, you never fuckin' let me!" His eyes were bright and feral. He tried flaring up his reiatsu to make his point, but he didn't have enough to do it just then. The outburst made him dizzy and he dropped his head back down.

"You came here tonight looking to try again, didn't you? This is the only way you can completely destroy yourself now, huh? Well, guess what--I ain't gonna let that happen."

Ichigo moved in close and a soft light came from his hands. Grimmjow could feel his bleeding wounds coagulate and even start stitching together a little. His head, though, was starting to feel drowsy. He tried looking up again.

"When the fuck did you learn kido?" He saw the brat smirk at that.

"They said I couldn't be a captain until I learned some. I told them Kenpachi didn't know any either, but then Renji made fun of me and said that, even as bad as he was, I would never be able to do it any better. You know how that sort of thing goes."

The thing that sucked was that the brat was right. He did know how that went. He knew entirely too much about Kurosaki and his friends--more than any enemy should know. Know thine enemy didn't apply to the stupid little things that you couldn't even exploit in battle. He had seen them interact--watched them closely after Aizen had been defeated; he had bided his time until he felt certain he would be strong enough to take on Ichigo again, sneaking into the real world whenever he could to gauge the shinigami's power level against his. He saw all the friendly gatherings, heard all the friendly banter. All he wanted was some good intel, and all he got was trivial bullshit. He even knew stupid things like the big titted girl's favorite color and the fact that the guy with the glasses hated buttons.

Then Ichigo had to run off to Soul Society and become a captain. Grimmjow hadn't been able to watch him there, didn't know how much he had improved, and especially didn't realize how much more power the brat had gained. Not to mention the fact that the kid had learned to hide his reiatsu really well now.

After months of quietly waiting for him, Ichigo had finally returned to the real world. Grimmjow had started their fight almost immediately once he sized up the kid's reiatsu and came to the conclusion that it was indeed now inferior to his own. Boy how wrong he had been, and now here he was getting patched up after losing to the brat _again_.

"You're wrong." Grimmjow grabbed Ichigo by his haori and stared him straight in the face. "I came here to win tonight. I thought I could finally beat you. I didn't realize you started fucking hiding your reiatsu."

The damn brat was smirking again. "Sorry about that. That's another thing they've made me do since I became captain. More to the point, though, you were still egging me on to finish it this time, too, after I whooped your ass. I told you, I'm not gonna let you destroy yourself through me."

"And why the hell not?" His anger was sparking again, and while the kido was healing him, he could feel also his reiatsu ready to flair at his command. Ichigo, however, sensed this and immediately altered his kido to bind Grimmjow as well. Then he stared straight into Grimmjow's eyes with a dead serious look on his face.

"Because I love you, ya dumb-ass."

All of a sudden, there were soft lips pressed lightly to his, and then they were gone. Grimmjow's eyes went wide; then, he clamped them tightly shut.

"No, no, no, no, no!" He yelled shaking his head violently. Some small part of Grimmjow had always sort of expected this kind of thing from Kurosaki, and that made it all the worse now that it was actually happening. "Why do you fucking do this to me, huh? Why do you gotta fucking make me feel like I _can_ feel? What do you fucking want from me!?"

For a moment, it seemed like Grimmjow's angry energy would burst out through Ichigo's binding spell. Kurosaki, however, just moved to embrace the teal haired Espada and the energy slowly subsided.

"I know, it doesn't make any sense." Grimmjow was surprised at Ichigo's response. "You know, though, it's not just that you haven't been able to let me go; I haven't been able to let you go either."

"What do ya mean?" Grimmjow narrowed his eyes at the shinigami.

"I thought you were dead for the longest time. No one could ever find you these past few years. Most of the other arrancar were reborn in Soul Society like other hollows. A couple went to hell."

"Oh, yeah? Which ones?" Grimmjow said with a sardonic grin.

"Yammy was one, and I think some fraccion as well."

"None of the other Espada, huh?"

"Hey, you only go to hell if you were bad when you're a human. Hollow's sins are cleansed through a shinigami's zanpakuto."

"Yeah, and how about shinigami that are also hollow, huh?" Grimmjow gave Ichigo a pointed look.

"Hey hey, my zanpakuto works just fine for cleansing hollow sins, whether I got a hollow in me or no." Ichigo held his hands up in mock defensiveness and assumed a goofy grin.

"You look just like the guy with the sandals and the hat when you do that."

"Well, he was my sensei. Guess I picked up some of his bad habits." Ichigo's grin remained.

"What are you grinning like an idiot for?" Grimmjow was getting irritated again.

"I was just thinking how like a normal conversation this is--well, normal for me and my friends anyway."

Grimmjow huffed and crossed his arms. Ichigo could see a very slight tinge of pink on his cheeks. "Shut up, brat. We're still enemies here you know."

"Wow," Ichigo said with surprise, "I didn't think you guys could blush. Thought your hierro was all bone and reiatsu."

"I said shut up!" Grimmjow was holding his fist up threateningly now. "It's as hard or soft as I want it to be."

"Oh, yeah?" Ichigo leaned in close again so that their noses almost touched. "How soft can you make it?"

Grimmjow knew that the brat was challenging him now. On the one hand, he could never back down from a challenge from Ichigo. On the other hand, he knew exactly where taking up the challenge would lead, and though he had been thoroughly disarmed of his anger at this point, he still wasn't certain that he really felt the other emotions that were slowly creeping up inside him.

"I know what you're doing, brat. I'm still a hollow though. I still want to destroy you. You wanna take the risk that I might not return the same feelings as you?" Grimmjow pushed forward until he was growling softly in Ichigo's ear.

Ichigo shivered. "I think you already do, and if you don't, I'll always be more than a match for you anyway."

Why did the damned kid always have to smirk like that? Why did he suddenly realize that it was making his groin tingle? Fuck, why was this happening again? Oh, fuck it. If he really was here to destroy himself, he might as well do it in a more enjoyable way.

"Alright kid, you got a deal. But I'm on top."

"Tch. Whatever you say, Grimmjow."

Then, he finally got the damned brat to shut up.


End file.
